PARADISE

    A mythical place of peace, beauty and abundance whose chief feature is being located elsewhere. One famous paradise is the biblical Garden of Eden from which Mankind was apparently expelled for acquiring knowledge - the message  presumably being that to live in paradise you have to be ignorant. Modern versions of paradise - generally tropical landscapes with palm-fringed beaches - share some of Eden’s amenities but offer a range of enhancements over God’s early version in the form of five-star accommodation, restaurants and nightclubs within easy reach, and a nearby airport (but not so nearby as to lie within earshot).
        One salient feature of paradise is that it offers a life of idleness. Certainly Adam and Eve were charged with maintaining the Garden, but the labour was apparently not onerous; and subsequent models appear to have done away with work altogether. Our view of paradise - indeed of happiness - is riveted to faineancy, to lying on beaches, avoiding serious reflection, having casual sex, and drinking to excess; in short to purposelessness, inanity and the thoughtless hedonism that the original couple presumably enjoyed before the serpent showed up with the apple.
        Voltaire drove a coach and horses through the vision as long ago as the eighteenth century. “We identify happiness with indolence,” he wrote, “forgetting that the most wretched possible circumstance is having nothing to do.”¹  Vain words. We dream of paradise still , and hope to spend a fortnight there next year.

¹  Dictionnaire Philosophique, op.cit., G: Genesis.